Chambana Sun

Black students, constituting 40.9% or 175 of Dr. Preston L. Williams Junior Elementary School's total student population of 428, accounted for 35 out of the 44 total suspensions (79.5%) in the 2021-22 school year, averaging one suspension per five students, according to the latest student discipline report by the Illinois State Board of Education.

During the same period, Dr. Preston L. Williams Junior Elementary School's 126 Hispanic students, who make up 29.4% of the school population, received two suspensions. This translates to an average of one suspension per 63 Hispanic students, which is definitively lower than that of Black students, making them the best-behaved racial group in the school.

Of the 44 total suspensions at Dr. Preston L. Williams Junior Elementary School in the 2021-22 school year, 19 were in-school suspensions and 25 out-of-school suspensions.

According to the report, in the 2021-22 school year, seven student suspensions at Dr. Preston L. Williams Junior Elementary School were for violence-related offenses.

During the 2021-22 school year, Dr. Preston L. Williams Junior Elementary School reported 148 students - equivalent to 34.5% of its student body - as chronically truant, meaning they had a repeated pattern of unexcused lateness or missing classes. In addition, 171 students, or 39.9% of the student population, fell into the chronically absent category, a broader measure that includes all absences, excused or not.

Black students were notably overrepresented in these statistics, comprising 45.1% of all students who were chronically truant, and 47.7% of the chronically absent.

In a broader context, data from the ProPublica database indicates that Black students are suspended at a rate 4.6 times higher than white students in Illinois—surpassing the already high national average rate of 3.9 times.

However, districts’ officials deny a direct link between these statistics and race. Lisa Small, the Superintendent of District 211, argues that these numbers oversimplify the situation. “Decisions are highly individualized and based on the specific behavior and are not well-suited to a simple numerical analysis,” she wrote in a statement. “They are not a statistic to us, but a developing young adult.”

Illinois ranks 12th in the nation for the highest rate of suspensions among Black students relative to their white peers.

Race	Number of Students	Total Infractions	Infractions Per Student
Hispanic	126	2	0.02
Black	175	35	0.2
Multiracial	42	3	0.07
White	77	4	0.05